{"product_id":"books-masterless-men-by-keri-leigh-merritt","title":"Masterless Men","description":"Analyzing land policy, labor, and legal history, Keri Leigh Merritt reveals what happens to excess workers when a capitalist system is predicated on slave labor. With the rising global demand for cotton - and thus, slaves - in the 1840s and 1850s, the need for white laborers in the American South was drastically reduced, creating a large underclass who were unemployed or underemployed. These poor whites could not compete - for jobs or living wages - with profitable slave labor. Though impoverished whites were never subjected to the daily violence and degrading humiliations of racial slavery, they did suffer tangible socio-economic consequences as a result of living in a slave society. Merritt examines how these 'masterless' men and women threatened the existing Southern hierarchy and ultimately helped push Southern slaveholders toward secession and civil war.","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53508436525329,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781316635438.jpg?v=1778146932","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/products\/books-masterless-men-by-keri-leigh-merritt","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}